Soccer Fever

The past couple weeks have been all about soccer.  Every year the church asks Andres to help them organize a tournament for the kids and youth.  Of course he agrees to it, especially since his sons end up being a part of it.  But soccer in Guinea is extremely intense and political.

     I had my first taste of this when I played on our neighborhood’s team last month.  I thought I was being asked to be part of the team to play, when in reality the team mostly wanted me to supply equipment for them.  At the first game, after a speech from the elder about soccer bringing us together in the spirit of peace and unity, there were riots because of a bad call made by the referee.  Initially he called for a penalty.  Then the fans rushed the field in protest, so he reversed his decision, after which the fans from the other team rushed the field.  It ended with the match being annulled, and I didn’t ever get to play. 

     I did get the chance to play in the following game, for about twenty minutes, but I got the impression that I was only playing because I was the “token white player who provided the balls for the team.”  The other thing I realized is that as the only white player, everything I did was multiplied by a factor of ten.  If I did something good, everyone thought it was amazing.  If I did something bad, everyone thought I was absolutely horrible.  Even the ref shared these sentiments, calling a foul on me for every tiny bit of contact, but refusing to give me the penalty when I was tackled in the box, about to score a goal.  And I’m talking American football tackle, not just soccer tackle.  Not only that but everyone wanted to know why I didn’t score a goal, even though our team was scoreless, and I didn’t even play a full half of the game.  After this I didn’t bother showing up to any more games.  As I was saying, soccer is very intense and very political. 

     During the kids’ tournament, the big deal has been checking the players’ ages.  The tournament is supposed to be for kids and youth 14 and under.  The difficulty is that they don’t give out birth certificates in Guinea, and no one keeps track of their birthdays.  So kids here don’t usually know their exact ages.  They usually guess their approximate age whenever the parents feel like enrolling them in school, but not everyone starts school at the same age.  Andres also explained that teams here will stack the teams with older kids and keep adding older, and older ones the closer the team gets to the playoffs and finals.  Last year’s final was basically a match between college age players. 

     So this year Andres came up with a system of registration and pictures, to identify the players who would be eligible to play.  During a preliminary meeting, two weeks prior to the start of the tournament, he had the coaches look over each team to protest any players they thought might be too old.  Then he took pictures of each player, accompanied by their name and approximate age, and printed off a color page for the games.  Before each game and before any substitutions, he checks the players to his picture on the page.

     This system has worked pretty well, except that we have had teams try to sneak on illegal players.  One team tried to substitute one player with his older brother.  We caught this pretty quickly, but missed another illegal substitution for a player who looked similar enough to the picture but couldn’t seem to remember his own name.  When the mistake was later discovered, the team had to forfeit the game.  This was the same team who mysteriously had four new coaches the day of the first game.  We don’t know if these men imposed their will on the kids or if the kids asked for their help, but it was clear that they had never worked with the kids and were simply trying to get their neighborhood to win (hence the new players on the team, players, I might add, who weren’t even from the same neighborhood).

     But it’s not just the coaches creating drama and suspicion.  The fans are also contributing to the excitement.  I’m used to having soccer matches where the fans stand on the opposite side of the field as the team bench, or at least a respectable distance away.  During this tournament, the fans swarm the bench, even trying to take a seat on the bench, drinking water from our cooler, and generally acting like they’re part of the team.  They do this during the huddle too.  Instead of having a private discussion with the team, my half time pep talks have been to a huddled mass of spectators, all curious to hear what the coach will say, and everyone interjecting their own advice and coaching tips as well.  It’s a little intimidating and very difficult to concentrate.  And when anyone scores a goal, the crowd goes wild, everyone rushing onto the field, dancing and cheering as if they had just won the whole tournament.  It takes at least 5 minutes after every goal to get the game going again.  As I said, very intense.

    And now our team has made it into the finals.  This Sunday we play Baralande.  That’s my neighborhood, though I’m coaching the team from Correrah.  It’s gonna be nuts!  Andres plans to rope off the field, post guards, and invite the police to attend.  We would appreciate your prayers.  Of course, we would love it if our team won, but more than anything we’re hoping for a fair and peaceful game without any problems.

   Olé!  Olé, olé, olé!  Praise the Lord!